Sandcastles
by WonderlandInParadise
Summary: "Hey. What's your name?" "Annabeth." "I'm Percy. Wanna build a sandcastle?" "Yeah, okay." Percy and Annabeth's friendship from first grade to senior year, revolving around their favourite thing: sandcastles. WARNING: T for character death. Percabeth one-shot.


**... Hi...**

 **Please don't kill me.**

 **I know, I know, I have, like, three fics to update, and I've had at least five people review on _Twice On Me_ like, "UPDATE OR I WILL COME TO YOUR HOUSE AND INCINERATE YOUUUU!" But this has just been sitting on my Word Doc all sad and lonely since April so I thought I'd just publish it first, in case I forget.**

 **Rest assured, I will update the other stuff.**

 **Probably.**

 **SCHOOL IS DESTROYING MY LIFE OKAY.**

 **Sorry about that, I've been watching too much danisnotonfire and AmazingPhil (if you don't know who they are, you need to sort out your priorities).**

 **And after that insanity, ON TO THE FIC.**

 **Disclaimer: Everything's mine and it's copyright (joking most of it's Uncle Rick The Troll's)**

 _Hey Seaweed Brain,_

 _We've come such a long way, huh? I mean, I can hardly remember before I knew you. Nine short years, and you've already become my everything._

 _I still remember the first time we met. You are in the sandbox, making sand castles with that sky blue bucket of yours. You see me watching you from the looming shadows of the kindergarten building, alone, while all the other kids run around and mess about on the playground. You smile your six-year-old gap-toothed grin, sea green eyes twinkling like the stars, and beckon._

 _You don't have to say anything; you just hand me that spade, too big for my small hands. For the rest of the day, we sit in the golden sand, digging and scooping and shovelling. I have never felt so accomplished in my life as to when I make my first perfect sand castle. You smile again and clap. I really like that smile._

 _It was the first of a few dozen hundred sand castles built, both on the beach (your most favourite place in the world) and our elementary school kiddy sandbox._

 _Fourth grade. You're still my best friend, for reasons both you and I can't explain. We always stuck together. We always have sleep overs on Friday nights; we take turns at each other's houses. If we're at my house, Daddy would bring us to the fast food joint just down the street, and we would watch movies on the couch with bowls of popcorn nestled in our blanketed laps. We always fell asleep by ten o' clock, no matter how many promises we made to stay up all night and watch the sun rise._

 _If it's your house we're at, your mother would buy a huge tub of ice cream and defrost the pizza for us. We would go out to the scrubs that hugged your apartment building like a friend and catch the fireflies that never seemed to appear at my house. They glowed like little sparks of emerald flame, illuminating the glass jars we used to capture them. We always released them, as the science teacher taught us to._

 _I always liked your house the best. There I didn't have to share one of the best people in my life with other people, except Sally, and I never minded 'cause she never made it feel like I had to, unlike Helen and Bobby and Matt, who hogged Daddy like they hogged the television with figure-skating tournaments and WWE._

 _The last day of sixth grade. You and I are going to different middle schools. We won't be able to exchange peanut butter and jelly sandwiches again. We won't be sitting next to each other at lunch. We won't be paired for school projects again. We won't be telling each other stupid jokes on the bus ride home. No more meeting at the sandbox for secrets (we've both grown way too big to fit in that anymore; in fact, I'm taller than you, a fact you despise)._

 _I would miss seeing that smile every day._

 _Middle school's hard without your stupid remarks to make it funny. Your childish sense of humour always made me laugh, especially when paired with your goofy smile, no matter how idiotic your jokes were. I make more friends: Thalia, Piper, Reyna, Luke. But not one of them like playing in sandboxes._

 _I still see you on Fridays, sometimes. When you're not too busy with meets. You joined the swim team at your middle school._

 _I wish you would become my one friend again. It was so much easier when it was just you and me. Now you have Jason and Nico and Grover. I have Thals and Pipes and Reyna (she hates nicknames; take note of that next time you call her something stupid). We're so busy with others we never have time for fireflies that glow like green fire, for promises to stay up that go un-kept, for peanut butter and jelly sandwich exchanges, for building sand castles with too-big spades and sky blue red buckets._

 _For each other._

 _Freshman year. We're in the same high school, which is my wish come true. We meet at our lockers between classes. We sit next to each other in History and pass notes, especially when it gets to the Greeks and Romans, our favourite topics. I sit on the bleachers during your swim meets and cheer you on._

 _Then I get a cough, in sophomore year. My chest hurts, but I dismiss it as a sort of virus and move on. It gets worse, with me wheezing at every inhale and the chest pains getting harder and harder to ignore. The headaches that send my vision spinning and make me nauseous. Most of the time I can't catch my breath, even if I'm just walking._

 _Finally, Helen and Daddy bring me to the doctor when I cough up blood. The sight of crimson red spreading on the bone-white tiles of the school corridor brings my lunch up._

 _I am diagnosed with lung cancer. The doctor advises me to start chemotherapy immediately._

 _Helen cries like it's the apocalypse happening while Daddy's face turns several shades before he lurches off to throw up, but all I feel is… numb. You rush over to my house after you hear about it. Of course, there are rivulets spilling down your face like a waterfall. You were always very tough, even when Zo_ ë _died in a car accident. You loved Bi like a sister. But at this point, your face is all crumbled and you look like you could deflate at any point._

 _You ask me how I am so strong. I have no answer. But it only sinks in a couple days later. I wake up and accept the fact I have cancer. Maybe "accept" is too strong a word. I refused to believe I was a cancer patient. When I go through chemo, I cry and cry and cry._

 _I cry a lot. Sobbing into my pillow, wailing in the hospital, sniffling into my hands. My hair falls out, a few strands at first, and then huge clumps, until I'm as bald as a new-born._

 _The chemo doesn't seem to be helping. My condition gets worse. Sometimes I can't even get out of bed. My lungs don't seem to be working; it's a chore just to inhale and exhale. On bad days, it seems I'm drowning. Water seems to be washing through my lungs in gushes, preventing me from taking a breath. Everything looks fuzzy and wavering, as if I'm underwater. I move in slow-motion, like I'm waterlogged. In reality, the tumour is making me lose my breath._

 _I'm slowing dying. Everyone knows it, yet nobody acknowledges it besides me. I know my own body; I know that cancer is taking away my very life essence, chipping it away slowly, like torture. I was a brat at the start. I have finally accepted the fact that I am on my last days, borrowed days. I fought this losing battle for two years, it's time I lay down my weapons and armour._

 _You always come over now. You don't care about anything anymore. You skip swim meets. You are there and not at the same time. At this point, both sets of parents are getting worried about the two of us, me because I'm on my physical deathbed and you because you're on your emotional one._

 _If you're reading this, it means I'm no longer here. I hope I look nice at my funeral. I'll be wearing my favourite grey dress. Don't beat yourself up over it. This is nobody's fault. Live your life to the fullest. I had eighteen short years. I hope you have eighty long ones. Graduate, travel the world, find a job, fall in love, get married, have kids, watch your grand kids play. Don't worry about me, Perce. I'll be okay. I'll have Bianca with me._

 _I've always loved you, from the minute you grinned that six-year-old gap-toothed smile at me from the sandbox. I just never admitted it. Too scared, I guess, of failure and rejection. Pride was my weakness. Now it's too late, but here you go: I loved you when you were dating Calypso and Reyna. I loved you when I was dating Luke. You mean the world to me. I love you, more than a friend, more than architecture, more than books, more than my Yankees cap, more than Luke, more than you know, more than anything else._

 _I love you more._

 _I'll be waiting at the sandbox. We'll build a sandcastle together when you arrive (hopefully sixty-two years later)._

 _Wise Girl_

When Percy Jackson answered that phone call at four-thirty-three p.m. on Friday, the seventeenth of June, he heard silence. And then, Helen Chase, crying. Saying one word, "Annabeth", her voice cracking at the end.

He knew, at that moment, that she was gone.

He ran over to the Chase house, and they cried, so hard, together. In his fuzzy state of mind, he thought, _Annie_ _would make a joke about how the room would flood if we cried any longer._

Mr Chase handed Percy an envelope, sunny yellow and slightly crumpled. "For Seaweed Brain" was written in Penelope's sloping script, with blotted black ink. "She wanted you to have this," he said quietly, a single tear leaving its transparent trail down his cheek.

Percy took it back home and opened it. The letter was three pages long, in three different types of note paper. The ink wasn't the same, either, nor the handwriting. By the time he got through the letter, it was tearstained.

At Annabeth's funeral, he went up to the casket, to see her face one last time. She was right, he noted. She was dressed in her steel grey dress, the strapless one she saw in the mall and fell in love with.

He put that shovel, now too small for their eighteen-year-old hands, and that sky blue bucket in the casket, to be buried with her. "Hey," he whispered to her. "Say hi to Bi for me, 'kay? And I want you to build sandcastles while you wait for me. Build a whole city. You're my very best friend, forever and always. I wish I had had the nerve to tell you this when you were here, but I love you too. More."

He swore he felt her presence, her smile and her breath on his ear as a voice like wind and sunshine and happiness laughed, "You're such a Seaweed Brain, and I still love you."

Afterwards, he went to the sand box and built a sandcastle, for the last time. Just for her.

 **Well... yeah...**

 **I hated killing off Annabeth too, but this is supposed to be a sad story.**

 **Sorry if it did any damage.**

 **R &R, F&F?**

 **Love y'all! Bye!**


End file.
